Film and Panel Discussion On the Exclusion of Baha'is in Iran from Higher Education

Education Under Fire, a 30-minute documentary on the struggles of
Baha’i youth in Iran to be allowed to attend college, will be screened at
Pomona College on Sunday, April 22 at 2
p.m. at Pomona College’s Frank Dining Hall Blue Room(260 E. Bonita Ave., Claremont). A panel and group discussion will
follow.

The film depicts how
Baha’is in Iran have been subjected to systematic persecution, including
arrests, torture and execution for refusing to recant their beliefs; prohibited
from going to college and blocked from many professions. Because of this
exclusion, Baha’is formed their own semi-underground university in 1987: the
Baha’i Institute of Higher Education (BIHE). Even after repeated raids and
arrests, volunteer teachers and administrators continued to provide an
education for thousands of Baha’is across Iran. However, in 2011, the Iranian
government led a fierce crackdown, raiding 30 Baha’i homes and detaining over a
dozen BIHE professors and administrators. The school was shut down and several
of the arrested remain imprisoned.

The documentary includes
footage and photos spanning two decades of BIHE classes and rare video from
inside Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, with personal stories from a dozen
students and teachers. In the film a BIHE graduate proclaims, “The government
can crush our bodies, but they cannot crush the mind and soul.”

The representative
of the Baha’i International Community to the United Nations, Amnesty
International’s Iran specialist and the co-founder of the Iran Human Rights
Documentation Center are also featured in the film.

The screening is sponsored by the Claremont Colleges
Amnesty International club. For more
information, contact: (909) 607-4016 or mkk04747@pomona.edu.

Pomona College, one of the nation’s premier
liberal arts colleges, provides its students with a challenging curriculum in
the humanities, natural sciences, social sciences, and fine arts, and an
unsurpassed environment for intellectual inquiry and growth. Its hallmarks
include small classes, close relationships between students and faculty, and a
range of opportunities for student research.